Save "Deuteronomy 28:11 - Whose womb is it?
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וְהוֹתִרְךָ֤ יְהֹוָה֙ לְטוֹבָ֔ה בִּפְרִ֧י בִטְנְךָ֛ וּבִפְרִ֥י בְהֶמְתְּךָ֖ וּבִפְרִ֣י אַדְמָתֶ֑ךָ עַ֚ל הָאֲדָמָ֔ה אֲשֶׁ֨ר נִשְׁבַּ֧ע יְהֹוָ֛ה לַאֲבֹתֶ֖יךָ לָ֥תֶת לָֽךְ׃

GOD will give you abounding prosperity in your issue from the womb, the offspring of your cattle, and the produce of your soil in the land that GOD swore to your fathers to assign to you.

(The above rendering comes from the RJPS translation—an adaptation of the NJPS translation.)


Contrary to the claims of some interpreters, the gender-role question as to whether an Israelite husband controls his wife’s womb is simply not in play in this biblical passage. See further my comment on 7:13.


As for the translation, the NJPS “the issue from your womb” is not defensible (despite its being conventional in English translations, going back hundreds of years). It is overly literal for a “thought-for-thought” type of translation like this one. The revised rendering reassigns the possessive pronoun so that it modifies “issue” rather than “womb,” not only to correct NJPS on its own terms, but also to avoid a gender misreading. And for consistency, it likewise reassigns the same pronoun in the other genitive phrases in this verse.

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